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Ordered winter tyres/ wheels for my iX3 so will see what difference it makes to range. They’re an inch smaller and also narrower, so won’t be a direct comparison. Seen a slight drop in this cold snap but haven’t done any long journeys this week.
The Hyundai had 'adaptive' regen added after an update, or "what the **** is my car doing now?" as we called it.
Related to EV's and slippy conditions, any opinions on driving in snow with them? I ask because they're often RWD and obviously automatic. I had a friend who sold his automatic RWD ICE car shortly after having a nightmare trying to get up a motorway slip road in bad snow.
I'm only really considering a yearly (if even) tobogganing trip up local hills with the kids. Always drove FWD manual cars, carefully, and had no issues - with normal tyres.
Our i3 and BMW 3 touring have been fine in the snow with winter tyres. Even fairly deep snow and compacted snow seemed to be okay. We live on a hill.
This is a good graph showing "how much" each system offers to the braking load (taken from the LEAF website).
I think I read the LEAF offers something like 0.8g (force) max as regenerative braking..anything above this uses friction brakes.
ALSO... I know other cars use this function too, but not all, but the e-pedal (one pedal system) on the LEAF employs both regen and friction. I know some EVs with one pedal driving DON'T employ the friction brakes with this function. This you can come to a 'moderately rapid' complete stop with one pedal driving.
I just use one pedal (e-pedal) mode all the time. Also, I never use the parking brake now. Which leads to pretty lazy driving, and when I jump in an ICE I frequently nearly let it roll away when parking!
Re tyres and winter... I just stick Michelin cross climate 2s on all my vehicles and drive happy all year round!
DrP
I sincerely hope these 850BHP 3100KG ****ers never make it to the UK
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/tesla-cybertruck
Musk also touted the Cybertruck's off-road credentials: "you can drive over practically anything...
...including pedestrians, cyclists, even that annoying Honda Jazz that's in the way.
Coldest conditions my EV has been used in, it's minus 4 here today. The battery life is woeful in these conditions, this is fine for my daily commute but is not great when you're driving a distance especially at night.
Before you all start telling me how the heaters make a huge impact on battery life, I only heat the cabin to 18 degrees and use the heated seats and steering wheel instead.
As for brake asist being used on EVs, IME this feels very similar to using engine braking in an ICE car that I was taught to use when learning to drive. Makes for a very relaxing drive.
Before you all start telling me how the heaters make a huge impact on battery life
I think the actual battery temperature has as much or more impact than the heater, if you have a heat pump. My miles/kWh has gone down by about 10%, my total range down by about 20%. The car reported on a long trip that turning the heater off altogether would give 7 miles of extra range, but we were around 30 miles down.
The cold weather certainly has a large impact on the cars range estimation algorithm, it's currently about 20% lower than it was in warmer weather. I wonder if actual range is reduced as much as the range estimation states , or whether the range estimation is just erring on the side of caution.
Presumably if you were to do a long drive, the battery would warm up and range should improve, but I dunno really.
I think the actual battery temperature has as much or more impact than the heater, if you have a heat pump.
eNiro with heatpump here. We've gone from 4.5 to 5 miles/kWh in August to 3.2 to 3.6 in the last week as reported on the trip computer.
We're in Glasgow (been -3 to +5), local trips across the city twice a day, 10 miles each way. Heater set to 19C, steering wheel heater used.
Genesis GV60 with a heatpump. Averaged 3.5m/kwh over a year. <br />4ish during the height of summer, 3ish when it’s subzero like now.
We went from 4.63 in September to 4.03 yesterday on the exact same trip.
The mighty Leaf is sitting in the garage as it's -6C out we're going skiing tomorrow so I need to keep the battery at least warmish to get it to load OK.
It's ok enough in the snow on winter tyres. You do need to know how to drive on snow/ice which really boils down to how gentle to be. Efficiency on winters to summers is all over the place as it depends on what winters, what summers - Mich Alpin 6's are good
Snowy weather has revealed an EV thing - no hot engine to melt snow on the bonnet, so it slides off in a mass when you start to drive 🙂
A day of driving in the cold yesterday and got 3 per kwh rather than cars 30k mile average of 3.5. No heat pump model
theres a nice new energy use chart since a software update shows trip% and live split between motors climate etc and my suspicion is after driving with and without climate control is this is far more responsible for reduced range than cold battery chemistry.
I sincerely hope these 850BHP 3100KG **** never make it to the UK
They never will. Illegal in all sorts of ways.
Unlikely to even make it out of the US, where they are already sailing very close to the edge of legality.
Before you all start telling me how the heaters make a huge impact on battery life, I only heat the cabin to 18 degrees and use the heated seats and steering wheel instead.
Switching AC on is what does the damage. Using heaters but not AC (if they can be separated in your car, many new cars can't) will minimise the impact.
But AC at 18 Vs AC at 21 when the outside temp is low, is a tiny difference.
116KW max regen for the RWD car.
That's almost certainly the limit for the battery/invertor. It'll be balancing a rear brake load like that with friction brakes on the front.
Fag packet scribble says you'll be looking at around 325-350kW of total brake before the rear tops 100kW, and that's not an insignificant stamp on the brake pedal. 60-0 in under 5 seconds sort of thing. (Depends on lots of factors though!)
It's one reason why several manufacturers are looking at deleting rear brakes altogether. Once we get better batteries that can take more charge, 500kW+, I can't see rear brakes lasting long, not in their current form anyway.
Switching AC on is what does the damage. Using heaters but not AC (if they can be separated in your car, many new cars can’t) will minimise the impact.
My Leaf has a heat pump but also a normal PTC heater. If you leave it on Auto in the cold it runs the heat pump, and the car will steam up with 4 people in. But you can turn on both heat and AC which obviously necessitates the use of the PTC heater. It did clear the windows, but thinking about it now I didn't check the energy consumption after I did that so it may have been more responsible for the drop in range and I didn't realise.
Switching AC on is what does the damage. Using heaters but not AC (if they can be separated in your car, many new cars can’t) will minimise the impact.
My car has a separate ac button to the rest of the heating, but switching the ac on or off makes no difference to the range estimation, whereas switching the heating on or off (actually it's the fan on or off) changes the range estimation by about plus or minus 30 miles.
Maybe turning the ac on or off would affect the range estimation if it was warm outside?
I think the car has a heat pump and resistive heating according to what I read, but it's hard to get any technical info to understand how it all works together as a system.
Snowy weather has revealed an EV thing – no hot engine to melt snow on the bonnet, so it slides off in a mass when you start to drive 🙂
Same happens with LED headlights. And screenwash pipes.
My top tip for winter EV driving is the -20 screenwash
Tesla Model Y, heated windscreen wipers/nozzles; really good, and more important in EV as no engine heat.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67591311
Article mentioning phantom braking in tesla that somebody higher up the thread was talking about
Article mentioning phantom braking in tesla that somebody higher up the thread was talking about
Go to teslamotorsclub.com and you’ll see that the BBC are a few years behind on this story despite the newness of the German Tesla whistleblower. It’s been a thing for years - AI is just a statistical model after all. It will come with errors of both types.
One fairly recent development in Tesla Autopilot surprised me - it now seems very sensitive to folks drifting on or over the lane dividers on motorways. Start to overtake someone and if they drift even onto the line as you approach the Tesla will brake to avoid coming alongside. Very conservative.
I expect there is a high degree of dislike of Tesla in Germany for several reasons including the incumbent motor industry lobby and Tesla’s poor attitude towards unionisation.
Switching AC on is what does the damage. Using heaters but not AC (if they can be separated in your car, many new cars can’t) will minimise the impact.
Nope. A/C will not make as big a difference as putting the heater on. And having A/C off will increase risk of fogging up.
Besides, who cares? The inside of the car needs to be comfortable! Preferably before I get in.
For the Polestar 2 at least (and I imagine many other EVs) if the charger is plugged in and you do a pre-heat of the cabin it will also precondition the battery (it won't do the battery if it's not plugged in)
Tesla Model Y here. Can't say I've noticed much if any difference in range or consumption during the cold snap. Battery pre-conditioning before reaching a Supercharger is a game changer though. No change in charging speed compared warmer weather. The e-Niro I used to have could barely get to 35kW when the temp got to zero
For the record, Tesla aren't the only company that do this now.
I need to input a rapid charger destination in to the satnav to precondition the battery. Worth it though.
I’ve had it charging at 231kW with the battery preheated.
Can’t say I’ve noticed much if any difference in range
I did read that teslas have two range estimation algorithms, the one that is shown all the time is just based on some fixed consumption figure and doesnt take into account your previous driving patterns/styles, or the outside temperature etc. And then there is the range estimation that is shown when you plug a destination into the sat nav, apparently this takes into account previous driving styles,previous consumptions figures, outside temperature and probably loads of other variables to give a more accurate estimate.
Maybe the above is just an american market thing, and not in europe/the uk? but I can see how this approach it prevents a lot of the chatter you see on ev forums about range in winter being much less than summer etc
25% range reduction in the i4 last weekend - circa 120 miles in temps between about -2.5 and +1 degC on Fri, 30 miles in about 1 degC on Sat and 120 miles in moderately heavy rain about 3-4degC on Sunday. Overall the car did 3 m/kw.hr vs the 4-4.1 that it managed for this drive in normal 15 degC ish driving, so 25% reduction hence a range reduction from 330 to 240 miles.
Regarding range estimates - my wife's commute is pretty good for efficiency - lots of constant 40 and 50s, and the Leaf seems to take a fairly long average. So even in the cold it's reporting 145-150 miles of range on full charge. But when you take off down the motorway it's less efficient so the remaining miles drops faster then distance covered. You'd think they'd be able to take your planned route into account, but I suspect that the dashboard ECU does one thing and the satnav does another thing and they don't talk to each other.
My experience of Tesla model 3 pre-heat pump is that approx 20-25% reduction in range IF doing short journeys (ie daily commute) - in practice this is largely irrelevant as it just means it goes from being stupidly cheap to run to extremely cheap - £5 = 300 miles in Summer, 225 in winter.
On longer journeys I can get much closer to Summer performance, so when it actually matters the reduction is much more mild - perhaps closer to 10% reduction.
A bigger difference which I have often noticed is heavy rain. I assume due to rolling resistance this has an obvious effect on range.
A bigger difference which I have often noticed is heavy rain. I assume due to rolling resistance this has an obvious effect on range.
Yeah the same effect is observable in ICEs too but no-one cared, other than me 🙂
I'm idly musing changing my car. Running a Nissan Cube ATM which owes me nothing but is thirsty on fuel and getting on a bit (06 plate, 111k miles). I don't do many miles, about 6k a year, tops and few long runs, generally 25 miles a day to and from work. Could swap cars with the Mrs for long runs (parental visits) if need be.
There will be pushback as any purchase requires funding but thinking about a Leaf around the 6-7k mark, providing I could get a decent return on the Cube, There's always a market for them so I don't see why not. No tax, no engine to service, no petrol to put in.... I know electricity doesn't grow on trees and I don't do many miles a year so would it be a worthwhile change to make? To be fair I know what the answer from inside the household will be but just seeing what the hive mind reckons.
I don’t do many miles, about 6k a year
That's about what we do for commuting miles. We save about 90% of our fuel costs. If you are doing 35mpg in a petrol Cube (at a guess) then at £1.40 a litre you're paying 17.8p a mile so your 6k miles is costing you £1068 a year.
In a Leaf, with a reasonable commute that isn't high speed motorway you should be able to see 4 miles per kWh. If you charge at home, you should be paying 7.5p for those 4 miles which is 1.9p a mile. that means your 6k miles will only cost you £113. So you'd basically be saving £80 a month.
I know electricity doesn’t grow on trees
It does fall out of the sky though and it can be had cheaply if you have a home charger.
you should be paying 7.5p
Does getting cheap EV power during the charging windows mean that you pay more for your power the rest of the time?
Does getting cheap EV power during the charging windows mean that you pay more for your power the rest of the time?
yes, it varies from provider to provider, but with octopus its around 30.xxp , so about 3 p per kwh higher than it would be if you were on the standard tariff
My monthly bill tells me the overall cost per KWh - its usually about 16p (Octopus Intelligent)
Does getting cheap EV power during the charging windows mean that you pay more for your power the rest of the time?
Yes, on Octopus the normal price is 27p and my new deal on Intelligent Octopus Go (the EV tariff) is 30p. But you get cheap electricity for your entire house between 11.30pm and 5.30am, so if you schedule your washing machine and dishwasher overnight you can save money anyway even before you've driven anywhere. I use the immersion heater for hot water now, since it then allows me to run my central heating cooler and more efficiently as well.
@molgrips, thank you for that. Food for thought. I'm lucky to get 35 out of the car even when using Shell V power and that ain't £1:40 a litre! The issue is charging at home. We don't have a dedicated charger so we'd have to factor that in but at least once it's done its done. Another thing is that I work shifts and most of my shifts start between 1 and 4a.m but I suppose if I can get a couple of days off a charge, more if I'm travelling to Notts Station (4 miles) instead of across town to the depot (13 miles) that's actually not such a hardship. To be honest I love the Cube but it's getting on in both years and miles.
We don’t have a dedicated charger so we’d have to factor that in but at least once it’s done its done.
Yes, you can get one from Octopus themselves quite cheaply. It's worth noting that to get the intelligent part you need either a compatible car or charger. The Leaf is not a compatible car so you need a compatible charger, and Octopus supply them. Mine is an Ohme.
The intelligent part means that you tell it when you want to leave, and it will decide how best to achieve that with surplus energy. If you work irregularly you can tell it your plans when you plug in; or if you have a set shift pattern you pre-program a schedule in and you'd change it when you change shifts.
If you're only driving a short distance across town, you will only use up 20% or so, which means it'll only take a couple of hours to recharge. Then when you plug in afterwards and tell it you want to leave at 2am, it'll be able to fit it in before you do.
Ok not 'cheaply' I meant 'competitively'.
That's all good to know, thank you. Whether it happens or not remains to be seen but I'm already a lot more educated than I was on the matter thanks to your input.
My monthly bill tells me the overall cost per KWh – its usually about 16p (Octopus Intelligent)
I just checked this, mine averages out at 13.85p/kWh with a total of 585kWh for the month of which 178kWh was full price, and about 150kWh was Playstation.
and about 150kWh was Playstation.
Jesus, makes my marathon RDR2 sessions look a bit amateurish.